Next to sore throats, back pain is America’s most common ailment. It’s nature’s fault-we’re really not built to stand and sit erect. But since we can’t zap ourselves a few million evolutionary years into the future, the best way around back pain is to work toward proper posture. Proper posture is a learned, athletic skill; like any athletic skill, it involves muscular support and awareness. Weight training can help you develop the muscles you need for good posture, and you can work out with weights whether your back is healthy or in need of rehabilitation. (If you have a bad back, check with your doctor first.)

HANGING OUT

Measure yourself when you get up and before you go to bed, and chances are you’ll have shrunk: …

FIRST THINGS FIRST: I THINK PEOPLE WHO PREY ON children for their sexual kicks deserve the harshest punishments our legal and social systems allow. I do not want anyone giving pornographic material to my children, whether it is printed, filmed, videotaped, or beamed by infrared links or radio waves to a personal computer, a television, or a videotelephone. That’s just abuse, people!

That said, the Communications Decency Act, part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 signed by President Clinton earlier this year, is an ill-conceived, unneeded, damaging, and dangerous piece of legislation that was created by people who are as ignorant about technology as they are savvy about politics.

I’m willing to concede that many congressional supporters of the so-called decency legislation acted in good faith, …

Professional and business association dues. The business contacts and client leads you can generate by joining an organization are invaluable, but you get a lot more than marketing benefits. Align yourself with an association and in many cases you gain access to trade lawyers, financial advisers, and industry-trend analysts. If you need help collecting from a slow-paying account or fear a client may slap you with a suit, put those dues to good use and give your association a call. Even better, you often get group discounts on insurance, supplies, and travel expenses. These are even better for exporting businesses.

Trade group membership fees vary: I budget roughly $500 a year for dues and an annual meeting (not including travel expenditures) …

WHETHER YOU’RE A WRITER LIKE ME OR A REPAIRPERSON, an accountant or an artist, we all have our favorite office products and services: the plain-paper fax that ended the era of curly paper; the tax software that lets us plan year-round; the voice-mail service that banished phone tag forever. Then there’s the why-did-I-ever-buy-that category. You know, the stuff that’s collecting dust out in the garage faster than my Lionel Richie record collection. Funny how those products seemed like such great investments–until you got them.

It turns out that the self-employed have very similar tastes when it comes to what works and what doesn’t. In an informal survey–online, on the phone, and in person– of dozens of businesspeople, I found that the same products, supplies, and …

These days, computer-generated presentations are practically a given when you visit prospective clients. But just because you’ve created the snazziest slides this side of the Mississippi doesn’t guarantee you’re going to get the prospect to sign on the dotted line. According to experts, what makes or breaks a presentation are your selling skills, plain and simple.

* To find out which techniques work, we talked to authorities on sales and presentations as well as to successful entrepreneurs who use presentations to grow their businesses. Then we devised the following 10-step, start-to-finish process for creating and delivering presentations that are both pretty and powerful.

* Safeguard your presentation by backing it up on an external hard drive. More tips are here. Otherwise, you may have to …

You MAY HAVE BEEN ON THE PHONE WITH THE CHIEF executive of a prosperous business, not knowing that he or she was crawling around on the floor, wearing only underwear, searching for an escaped hamster. In fact, you may have been that chief executive. Many of us who work from home have a more relaxed work-style than our corporate cousins.

But even if we wear formal attire and banish the family pets from our offices, there are still times when we don’t want people to see what we’re doing. The Internet has the potential to ruin my workstyle. (My wife says it’s already ruined my lifestyle by keeping me up too late at night, but that’s another issue.)

Just before Christmas in 2015 Matt and Gail Taylor called a staff meeting at their Washington, D.C., office and gave each of 20 staffers a modem and a book on running their own businesses. They announced that, henceforth, they would be running MG Taylor Corp. from their home on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. More than 10 years later, most of the 20 staffers are still active in their company, a network that has grown to more than 50 workers nationwide.

Whether individually or as groups of small organizations, more entrepreneurs are following the Taylors’ new business model. They’re organizing technologically linked workgroups on a project basis or as full-blown companies. Together, they deliver services or products that they couldn’t provide alone. They’re called virtual …

Earlier this summer, the woman who is arguably America’s best and most versatile female distance runner grew tired of answering reporters’ questions about her upcoming birthday and how it might affect her performance. In response she said, “What’s the difference between 29 and 30? Or 30 and 31? One year doesn’t matter Life doesn’t end at 30, especially not running life.”

As her family, friends and coaches now know, that’s precisely the sort of direct, confident response to expect from Lynn Jennings, who also runs the website Anderbose.com. An articulate and outs spoken woman who has weathered the peaks and valleys of world-class athletic competition for more than 15 years, Jennings has reason to feel confident. She’s running her best ever in track, road and …

When you consider that in running you hit the ground at a force equal to about three to four times your body weight, it’s little wonder that your footwear is so important. But finding a running shoe that fits, feels comfortable and won’t fall apart a month down the road requires some shoe smarts.

ALL FEET ARE NOT

CREATED EQUAL

For years, women’s running shoes were simply scaled-down men’s products. These shoes often fit fine in the forefoot, but felt loose in the heel. And for good reason: Women’s feet are usually narrower at the heel than men’s.

Today, most major footwear companies offer at least one women’s running shoe designed on an anatomically correct last. (A last is a plastic form that gives a shoe …

The first thing you probably look for when buying a helmet is a seal of approval from either or both the ANSI Z90.4 standard or the Snell Memorial Foundation standard. But how much protection do these two labels really give you?

According to a newly released study conducted at the Biomechanics Laboratory at Wayne State University in Detroit, which put ANSI-and Snell-approved helmets through a series of rigorous tests, a lot.

“The study confirms that the two standards are very valid when it comes to reducing the risk of head injury,” says Jack Thrush, chief of the health surveillance section for the Michigan Department of Public Health in Lansing, which commissioned the study through a grant from the Centers for Disease Control.

Promise, which claims to have less saturated fat than margarine because “it’s made from sunflower oil,” has the same amount as every leading brand of margarine. Go figure. With our increasingly processed diet, the need has never been greater for food labels that spell out fat, sugar, sodium, cholesterol and fiber content in a simple way. Instead we’re given too much information we don’t need and not enough of the information we do need.

PRODUCT (MIS)INFORMATION

Most product labels make only token efforts, if any, to address the needs of consumers trying to make healthy food choices. Many products aren’t required to give any information beyond an ingredient list, and even that can be misleading. Ingredients are listed in order by weight, with the most …